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Bottle & Tap

After more than a year of no beer to call its own, New Braunfels is close to a revitalization of its first brewpub.

The Faust Brewing Company, located in the historic downtown Faust Hotel, has developed under new ownership into a popular local bar with good taps and an impressive bottle selection. But the specter of the days when the pub made its own beer looms in the name and in the brewing equipment behind the bar.

Sitting at the end of the Faust bar on a recent weekday night, Houston-based brewmaster Ray Mitteldorf was unwinding after a day of figuring out just what it would take to get the brewery up and running again.

Mitteldorf, whom some will remember as the first brewer at the Dodging Duck Brewhaus in Boerne and a brewer at the later Yellow Rose Brewing Co., is helping the Faust out while he works on getting a new brewpub in Houston up and running. (He was head brewer at Houston’s only brewpub Two Rows when it closed its doors in October.)

Faust owner Vance Hinton doesn’t want to pin down a date for fermentation at the Faust this early on, but said he will launch next year with four beers including an altbier, a style of lager he came to love on his travels in Germany.

The gift of beer

Here’s how to make friends when it comes to last-minute Christmas gift giving: buy them a box of beer. Package stores are traditionally full of great deals that team up bottles of liquor with distillery glassware, flasks, or other goodies. More and more, beer is getting that same treatment.

These are just a few suggestions for the goodie list:

Chimay gift packs include one 12-ounce bottle each of the classic blue- red- and white-label varieties of the best known Belgian Trappist ales and the Chimay glassware.

Ommegang gift sets include a brewery glass and 750-milliliter bottles of the BPA (Belgian-style Pale Ale), Three Philosophers with cherries, and the spiced triple ale Tripel Perfection from Cooperstown, New York.

Duvel gift packs include the signature Duvel glassware and four 12-ounce bottles of the Belgian classic.

And lest you think only Belgian beers are packaged thusly, Shelton Brothers importers offers a set of four cheeky British beers from England’s Ridgeway Brewery in its Christmas box including Reindeer Revolt, Warm Welcome Nut Browned Ale (you’ll understand the name when you see the label), Pickled Santa Ale with spices, and the special reserve Very Bad Elf.

Travis E. Poling writes about beer weekly for the Current. He is co-author of Beer Across Texas: A Guide to the Brews and Brewers of the Lone Star State. Send information about beers or beer-related events two weeks in advance to travis@beeracrosstexas.com.